Epistemology: Plato's Forms

Hello.  Today, I'll be talking about Plato's Divided Line simile, and what he believes about epistemology.

Plato began his analysis of epistemology with the simple phrase “P knows X.”  (I think P is Plato, but I don’t know X, so I’m gonna say xenophobia)

What must be true to make the sentence true?  Well, in order for Plato to truly know xenophobia, he must believe it exists.  So, in order for “P knows X” to be true, “P believes X” must first be true.  This means that belief is required for knowledge.  

In order for Plato to know xenophobia, xenophobia has to be real.  It has to.  Plato cannot truly know a unicorn if a unicorn isn’t real.  Sorry everyone, unicorns don’t exist.  Or do they?  I’ll get to that, I promise :)

We have right now a tiny list of things that are necessary parts of knowledge.  1.) P believes X.  2.) X is the case.  Are these two sufficient?  Since I’m asking the question, no, they aren’t.  There is another component, where Plato has to describe xenophobia to us.  He has to give us the Logos.  So here is our nice little list again:

1.)  P believes X

2.) X is the case

3.) P can give Logos for X

Let me give you another hint:  This isn’t all of it.  Plato thought of something that condenses all of what I just described to you in a table, and this is the legendary, hated, evil Divided Line Analogy.

You’re welcome.

Now, I will delve into the fascinating four topics that are down there on the line, because you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about with that funky lookin’ thing.

Images/Shadows

Shadows and reflections can only tell us so much, which is why they are the “lowest” and “most basic” way of knowing something.  Imagine a tree.  Good.  That’s all there is to it.  Ha.  

OK, see that picture?  It’s a tree, right? So, it has a shadow.  It looks exactly like the tree, so is it also a tree?  No!  It’s a shadow!  Well, they’re both pictures.  What I’m trying to get across to you is this: a picture does not accurately represent a tree.  We can’t tell what kind of tree it is, and if I rotated the picture slightly, you wouldn’t know which one is the actual tree.  That is why images and shadows are the bottom rung of the divided line ladder, because it is very rudimentary.

Sensible Objects/Things

Take this paper.  You feel it, touch it.  You know it is a paper because you can experience the paper with a sense data.  However, they are not absolutely real since they are fleeting.  This paper will eventually get recycled or thrown away, where it is burned and ceases to be a paper.  At least, not THIS paper.

Let us now teleport ourselves to ancient Greece.  You are Plato, and you’re walking down the street and run into some random dude.  He has a horse, and you ask him what it is, he will probably say “it is a horse.”  You then ask him why the animal is a horse (it’s ancient Greece, such things are normal) and he cannot really answer.   All he is able to say is “it’s a horse because it’s a horse!”

This is not an accurate response because Dude hasn’t given you the Logos to back up his statement.  If he did know, if he gave a whole bunch of super-good reasons why it is most certainly a horse, then he knows on a conceptual level, which I will get to in a second.

An important thing to note about both of these last two rungs of the ladder is that they are both dependent on the sun.  Shadows and pictures cannot be real without light, and if the sun was not in the sky, there would be no people to perceive these things.  They are temporary, visible things, and are not completely real.

Concepts/Mathematical Forms

Things get a lot more difficult from this point on.  These next two bits are of the category "the forms," which is more like a theory.  Let us imagine three things: when a leaf falls into a fire, it catches fire, when you dunk your finger in a cup of coffee, it hurts, and when you put an ice-cube into the sunlight, it melts.  These are three more-or-less different instances, but they follow the same mathematical form:  When a thing touches a much hotter thing, it too, gets hot.  This theory, or law, or form will help us to know something.  It is a rule that can be applied to multiple situations. 

The fact that the laws exist make it not the most perfect form of knowledge, but it still is theoretical and happens in the minds.  This is why it is still in the realm of reason, know perception.  It is something we reason should happen, but not something we can physically, tangibly hold.  We can't look at the laws of physics and say "I would like to buy ten e=mc² please."

 My sister (a physicist) sniffed very primly and said that nothing in philosophy is pure science.  The definition of science in her words are: "A thing that can be performed over and over again with the same results in different situations by different people is a science.  Philosophy is not a science."

Higher Forms

*takes a deep breath*  I must begin this section with a quick little example, because that is the only way we can begin to grasp the FORMS! Imagine you are a poor, dumb stone carver.  You know that if you chip a bit off accidentally, there is no way to put it back together.  So what does the poor dumb stone carver do?  He goes to his boss- the artist, the master of masonry- and he asks for a form.  Usually, these forms (or models) are made of wood, are not to-scale, and are carved by the master.  This way, the artist can chug out lots of artistic stuff and the stone-cutter who is not very smart doesn't have to try and come up with something pretty.  And he knows exactly what to do, because he knows the form.

A form is an ideal situation.  It is what we compare things that we see to in our minds, so we know more about it.  You look at a teapot and know it is a teapot, because it fits the form of a teapot.  It has a spout, a handle, a lid, and might even have tea in it.  We can imagine an ideal teapot, and are able to identify other teapots that we see, and are able to determine that other things are not teapots.



So do you understand the divided line?  There is the other half of it, but its essentially the same thing.